The elevator that had already come up from the lobby floor to the floor where Wooyeon was opened its doors and soon swallowed Wooyeon’s body. The elevator with its doors closed descended rapidly back to the lobby.
With a short mechanical sound, the elevator doors opened and the luxurious lobby spread out before Wooyeon’s eyes. When he crossed the wide lobby to the entrance, the hotel employees standing at the entrance greeted Wooyeon respectfully.
“Please call me a taxi.”
“Where are you going?”
“Hanshin Hospital.”
“Please wait just a moment……”
Before the employee could even finish speaking, the gazes of the employees standing at the entrance, including him, passed Wooyeon in an instant and turned behind him. Wooyeon reflexively turned his body, and his wrist was immediately grabbed. Along with a thick pheromone scent came a familiar cologne fragrance. It was Jeonghan.
“Bring the car around.”
“Ah. Yes, understood. I’ll have it waiting right away.”
It seemed he’d followed right away on a different elevator. Wooyeon tried to pull out the wrist Jeonghan had grabbed, but the firmly seized wrist had no intention of escaping from Jeonghan’s hand. Wooyeon looked up at Jeonghan with resentful eyes.
“I’m not going with you.”
“Taking the car is faster than waiting for a taxi. Stay still.”
“I said I’m not going with a bastard like you!”
When Wooyeon struggled desperately to pull out his wrist, his slender body staggered. As if they’d been waiting, Jeonghan’s car soon stopped at the hotel entrance. Jeonghan, who received the keys from the valet employee, dragged Wooyeon to the front of the car.
Jeonghan, who opened the passenger door, immediately put Wooyeon in the passenger seat. Before Wooyeon could even get out of the car, Jeonghan immediately got in the driver’s seat, and Jeonghan, who leaned his body toward Wooyeon, fastened Wooyeon’s seatbelt for him. Wooyeon’s wet eyes met Jeonghan’s at close range.
“You… why are you really doing this to me?”
Resentment soon transformed into grief. When Wooyeon lowered his head, tears dripped onto his knees. No matter how much he tried to understand, Wooyeon couldn’t understand Jeonghan. Probably even if Jeonghan tried to make him understand, it would be useless.
Wooyeon realized it. Jeonghan and himself were too different. No, more than that, Kwon Jeonghan didn’t seem to be in his right mind.
“Why did you do it? Tell me.”
Wooyeon asked while looking at Jeonghan’s profile as he started the car.
“Am I that strange?”
“…You don’t understand why I’m doing this? You’re a complete crazy bastard.”
“Before I turned off my phone, I talked with the hospital. The attending physician said your mother is fine now and I also told that person to look after her carefully. Is it such a wrong to try to feed sunbae one meal before sending you off?”
“You think I can eat right now? Are you crazy?”
He was a person who absolutely couldn’t be reasoned with.
“What if something had happened to my mom because of that, what were you going to do?”
“I said it wasn’t like that.”
“Hah……”
The conversation kept going in circles. The car that Jeonghan drove roughly changed lanes here and there as it ran toward the hospital. The hospital, located not far away, quickly drew near and the building began to enter their field of vision.
“Even if sunbae went, nothing would change, so I didn’t want to make you worry and feel anxious in advance. That’s all.”
Jeonghan stopped the car in front of the hospital entrance and looked at Wooyeon as he spoke. He was saying nonsense. Beyond the car window, an ambulance had stopped with its siren wailing, and paramedics and medical personnel were transporting a patient.
It was a place that divided life and death. Here, his mom was fighting a war every single day, but he’d forgotten about his mom, absorbed in playing with Jeonghan. Wooyeon choked up with guilt.
“You’re not normal. Do you even know that?”
About Wooyeon being this angry, Jeonghan really had an expression that didn’t understand.
Jeonghan definitely wasn’t normal. And even in that moment, Wooyeon thought that he himself, who had feelings for such a Jeonghan, wasn’t normal either.
**13.**
Canceling all the tutoring scheduled for the evening, Wooyeon spent that night in the intensive care unit corridor. Fortunately, his mom regained consciousness late at night, but the tumor inside his mom’s head was still growing in size. Along with the cerebral hemorrhage that had suddenly burst last time, they’d caught some of the tumor with surgery, but because of the tumor’s location, complete surgical removal was impossible.
The more difficult his mom’s movements became, the more Wooyeon suffered from anxiety that she would soon leave him.
“……Let’s go.”
Jeonghan extended his arm to Wooyeon, who was crouched in a corner of the intensive care unit corridor. Wooyeon tried to push him away, but the body being lifted by Jeonghan had no weight to it. Wooyeon, forcibly lifted with his tear-dried, parched cheeks, staggered.
“She said she’s fine. Normally she could go into a general ward, but they’re going to watch her progress today and move her to a general ward tomorrow, so go in and sleep first and come back tomorrow.”
“……”
“Sunbae.”
Jeonghan gazed at him while cupping both of Wooyeon’s cheeks. Wooyeon’s eyes, which had lost focus, gradually looked at the pupils of Jeonghan standing close.
“…I hate you.”
He hated him for making it so he couldn’t even hate him as he pleased. When Wooyeon wandered around the hospital all night unable to even see his mom’s face, Jeonghan should have pretended not to know and left. Words of thanks wouldn’t come out to Jeonghan, who had stayed up all night together by his side. He couldn’t understand what on earth he was thinking. If this was going to happen, when he’d checked the hospital call at the hotel, he should have informed him right away.
Even at Wooyeon’s words, Jeonghan had no particular reaction. It wasn’t a disappointed face either. Jeonghan simply released the hands that had cupped Wooyeon’s cheeks and grabbed Wooyeon’s wrist again.
When Jeonghan grabbed and pulled Wooyeon’s wrist, Wooyeon weakly followed behind. Wooyeon, who took the elevator down to the basement, ended up getting back in Jeonghan’s car that he’d said he wouldn’t ride in.
“Want to go to my place?”
Jeonghan, who had started the engine, asked while fastening his seatbelt for him. Wooyeon shook his head. He just somehow felt like he shouldn’t.
“You don’t want to be alone, right?”
It was true that he didn’t want to be alone, but it seemed like he shouldn’t rely on Jeonghan any more.
“I have things to get ready and… I want to sleep at my place. That’s more comfortable.”
“That house is comfortable?”
“…I’m comfortable.”
Wooyeon let out a small sigh and answered. Jeonghan asked as if truly surprised, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to play along.
As the car started, Wooyeon kept his gaze out the window. The early morning road with neon signs going out was deserted. The ground was wet as if it had rained in the meantime, and the water-soaked cement floor sparkled in the headlight beams.
Wooyeon watched them absentmindedly with narrowly opened eyes. Before he knew it, they were in front of Wooyeon’s house.
“……”
Wooyeon, who got out of the car, stood in front of Jeonghan. It was clearly a timing where he should say thank you, but the words of thanks absolutely wouldn’t come out of his mouth. The gaze that had met Jeonghan’s lowered downward again. His long lowering eyelashes swayed beneath the damp early morning air.
“I’m going in.”
It was when Wooyeon was about to open the gate and enter the house without saying much else.
“Sunbae.”
This time too, it was Jeonghan who grabbed him. Wooyeon’s face as he turned to look at Jeonghan was haggard. He was a beauty with a lifeless expression. Jeonghan slowly closed and opened his eyes, and spoke to Wooyeon in a low voice.
“……Should I stay with you?”
His vision, accustomed to the darkness, captured Jeonghan’s face in his eyes. A great ripple arose in the heart that had been forcibly suppressed, that had seemed like a calm lake on the surface. Every time he was at his weakest, Jeonghan said the words Wooyeon wanted to hear most in this way. At the feeling of his eyes stinging, Wooyeon turned his head away from Jeonghan and blinked.
“It’s late, you should go home and rest too.”
“Sunbae.”
“I’m fine. Really… I’m fine.”
It was a tone where you couldn’t tell if he was really fine, or if he was chanting for himself to be fine. Wooyeon looked at Jeonghan, who had absolutely no intention of leaving, once more, then just turned around and opened the gate. The rusty iron gate opened with an unpleasant creaking sound.
“Drive safely.”
There weren’t many words that could replace saying thank you. Considering his apology toward his mom, that was the best thing Wooyeon could say. Through the self-closing door, Jeonghan’s figure standing still disappeared.
Wooyeon, who let out a deep sigh, went down the stairs leading to the semi-basement. And when he inserted the key into the doorknob and turned it, the key spun weakly without catching. At the déjà vu that came over him, Wooyeon opened the door wide.
“Ugh, hey… are you going to wander around this late every day?”
In the dark room, someone who had been lying on the floor sleeping sat up. Wooyeon took a half-step back and flipped the switch. Inside the room as the yellow light came on, Choi Seokwoo was standing there with a half-awake face.
“What the hell.”
“What do you mean what the hell. I came to collect.”
When Choi Seokwoo tilted his head left and right, there was a crunching sound of bones hitting each other. Wooyeon’s face turned pale as he looked behind him for no reason. How fortunate that he didn’t bring Jeonghan with him. Wooyeon’s shocked eyes turned toward Choi Seokwoo again.
“I already sent it.”
He’d definitely transferred this month’s promised interest as soon as he received his tutoring pay. One corner of Choi Seokwoo’s mouth, gradually getting closer to Wooyeon, was raised.
“Hey. You seem to be greatly mistaken about something. You think just paying the interest is enough? No, you should be paying back the money you borrowed, shouldn’t you? You think I’m running some charity business?”
